The Symptom on why Erdogan is popular I would say is the post-colonial stress Pakistanis have endured since independence from Britain in 1947 except for Quaid-E-Azam Jinnah or the founding ilk of the nation the country never had a leader that could unite in one base, Ayub Khan tried putting a nationalist vison in the 1960s but failed because of the differing political bases in the country, as a result of lack of good leaders and politicians to the clerics playing politics in very polirized tone Pakistani people look to leaders people abroad to see how they succeed, its not new my father who is 71 years old laughs when he sees Pakistanis under the age of 60 praise Erdogan,Turkey or some other foreign country as a fad that will die off because he is seen this cult like worship of past foreign leaders, for example I think
@Indus Pakistan would agree with me on this , in the 60s JFK was very popular in Pakistan in fact I heard my dad told me when he was killed much of the country felt sadden at his death or the fact his wife Jaqualine flew with PIA and visited Pakistan also this is was at the height of "American-Pakistani" friendship which since 1965 onwards has gone to meerly a transactional relationship to a un easy one these days, in the 1970s all the love was going to Arab leaders like Yasser Arafat, Gaddafi, King Faisal of Saudi Arabia and the eurphoria of Pakistan hosting the OIC summit in 1974 as well it got to the point where they named a Cricket stadium in Lahore to Gaddafi and a industrial city being renamed Faisalabad, in the 80s I think this continued on well into the 90s and 2000s so beacause of that you see this *** kissing of foreign leaders since then which I see mainly in the middle aged folk the younger folk are more towards Imran Khan sure they make like some aspects of Erdogan but not all of it I think we are moving away from foreign asskising in slow terms which is good.
Its actually more complicated than that real Islamists in Turkey think Erdogan is a joke and they have another political party which is a fringe its more secular and big tank the AKP Erdogan party but its courupt and self serving which will bite its *** once its voter base dies off
I would like to but I think a regional block is the close thing we can do we just need to tone the Iranians down so we can make the ECO stronger
I agree with this OP 10000 percent Erdogan is not some deity he is not the next caliph he wont bring back the Ottoman Empire all he will do is make Turkey more viable good or bad mostly bad now and in the end I see he wont last long the younger folks in Turkey are more secular and nationalist than ever before he wont last once they become the voting block of the nation, Pakistanis must give up this asskissing to foreign leaders and create our new leadership and put trust in our own institutions
Dude Antalya is more touristy than Istanbul more tourists go there to enjoy the beech lots of Russians and post Soviet folk go down there its Miami of Turkey lol, cant get more cosmopolitan than that if you want more traditional Turkey
@Nein would probably agree the Eastern flank or Black sea coast is more like that
Again Pakistani asskissing of foreign leaders is cringey at best, Erdogan if he were to swim in Pakistan you would have the cleric class blast him as a liberal hell bent on destroying the country lol